PBS Distribution dishes out a trio of delicious DVDs, perfect for a feast

by byte clay

Hungry for some informative DVDs that we promise are delicious and satisfying? Prepare to watch (before preparing the table) a trio of title from PBS Distribution. Nominated for an Emmy and James Beard Award, and winner of both Telly and TASTE Awards, “Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking” is hosted by Pete Evans, Australia’s top celebrity chef. Follow Pete on a culinary journey across America as he teams up with the country’s most innovative chefs to source the finest regional ingredients and create a multicourse feast for friends.In Season Three, learn cooking tips and techniques from talented chefs, including Lee Anne Wong, Ludo Lefebvre, David Kinch, and Michelle Bernstein, and explore how you can interpret their flavorful dishes in your own kitchen. Watch as diners sit down to enjoy these spectacular meals hosted in unique places, from a lush Hawaiian retreat and California orchard to a stunning Kentucky farm and remote Alaskan lodge with an amazing view. You’ll want a seat at the table!

For celebrity chef, author and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich, there is no place like home, especially at Christmas. In “Lidia Celebrates America: Home for the Holidays”—the latest installment of her journey to experience diverse American culture through food—Lidia invites six celebrity guests of different ethnic backgrounds to her holiday table: Christopher Walken, award-winning actor and childhood friend; award-winning actress Rita Moreno; Ann Curry, television journalist; model and television host Padma Lakshmi; celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson; and Carlo Ponti, Jr., conductor.The show begins in the kitchen and ends at the dinner table of Lidia’s home, where she has prepared a dish inspired by each of her guests’ roots and ethnic culinary traditions, peppered with their moving personal stories and unique tales from their homelands. Some of the dishes include sweet potatoes and cannellini beans inspired by Padma Lakshmi, Christopher Walken’s sautéed scallops and Marcus Samuelsson’s Swedish meatballs.

Join bestselling author Michael Pollan on a fascinating journey to answer the question: What should I eat to be healthy? Busting myths and misconceptions, the program reveals how common sense and old-fashioned wisdom can help us rediscover the pleasures of eating and at the same time reduce our risks of falling victim to diet-related diseases.

Pollan’s journey of discovery takes him from the plains of Tanzania, where one of the world’s last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers still eats the way our ancestors did, to Loma Linda, California, where vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists enjoy remarkable longevity, and eventually to Paris, where the French diet, rooted in culture and tradition, proves surprisingly healthy. Along the way, he shows how a combination of faulty nutrition science and deceptive marketing practices have encouraged us to replace real food with scientifically engineered “food-like substances.” And he explains why the solution to our dietary woes is in fact remarkably simple: “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

What Pollan means by telling us to “eat food” is to eat what people ate for the thousands of years before we became dependent on processed foods. He believes that many of our troubles today stem from thinking about foods solely in terms of the nutrients that are in them—a tendency fueled by the food industry’s practice of making health claims on products based on the nutrients they’ve added (vitamins, fiber or Omega 3s) or taken away (most famously fat). But science shows that a wide variety of diets can be healthy, provided they consist of the kind of whole foods our species has evolved to eat, which include all of the nutrients we need.

A selection of “Michael Pollan’s Food Rules” include eat only foods that will eventually rot; eat only foods that have been cooked by humans; avoid foods you see advertised on television; eat mostly plants; serve the vegetables first; make water your beverage of choice; stop eating before you’re full; don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food; and break the rules once in a while.